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4.0 out of 5 starsAn interesting experiment in contemporary horror
'Lunar Park' is a strange book - perhaps the oddest that Bret Easton Ellis has published. In effect, it re-imagines the novel of contemporary nihilism that Ellis pioneered in 'Less Than Zero' and 'American Psycho' as a tale of paranoiac domestic horror in the manner of 'Poltergeist' - a family threatened in its own home by unnatural forces.

2.0 out of 5 starsHalf a great novel
Read the first 60 pages of Lunar Park and you might be tempted to re-jig your week so you can fit this novel in. You feel excited to be reading something in prime condition from one of the US's most inconsistent novelists. In those first few pages, he makes some fine jokes about opening lines (his own) and even manages to get one in of his own that sounds fittingly...

This is a great Amazon pick. If you've never read a book by Bret Easton Ellis, this is an excellent place to start. The book starts off as a pseudo-memoir by Ellis, and he covers the progression of his career, his books, his freakish fame, starting from Less Than Zero. Some may find this self-indulgent and an annoying bit of self-promotion, but I found it engrossing and gossipy fun. The book then becomes a story of an author going through a strange and spooky mid-life crisis, where even Patrick Bateman (the main character of American Psycho) pays him a visit. The writing is in this novel is clear and fluid, and you'll want to go back and read (or re-read) his other books after this. I'm happy I bought this novel. It's fun and entertaining. Other Amazon picks I recommend: Less Than Zero by Ellis, Bright Lights, Big City by McInerney, The Losers' Club By Perez

This is not a book that is easily categorised. There are sections of straight biography, others that mimic early Stephen King, and then there are the more obvious Bret Easton Ellis passages.

The book does not match the disturbing brilliance of American Psycho, however there are glimpses of the undoubted Ellis talent. Interesting, but really only a stop-gap until Ellis writes another full novel.

The start of this was very promising, the first chapter being a fake autobiographical musing of the author's descent into drug addiction which launches us into BEE becoming a family man with an actress wife and 2 kids. From there it is downhill as he tries to paint for us a horror novel based upon Patrick Bateman, the protagonist of American Psycho allegedly based upon BEE's father, doing what Wes Craven did for the Freddie Crueger character in Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Its nicely written but dismally plotted and not in the league of Glamorama, American Psycho or even the less good The Informers. His daughter's Furby - here called a Terby to provide a supposedly witty wordplay climax - comes to life and starts killing animals (well we all new those things were evil) while a student who looks like his dad/Bateman appears starts copying the killings in American Psycho (I think though that the references to the AP text are completely fictional but I may be wrong). BEE being a reforming drug addict/alcoholic is not taken seriously until it is too late. That's about it.

I read American Psycho many years ago, and I came to Lunar Park with high hopes after reading other customers' reviews. I have to admit that in the beginning, the story is quite gripping and I loved the mysterious feeling during the first third of the book. However, what followed was a chore to go through. I'm not one to leave a book half-read, so I kept going until the end. What a waste of time.

This is a very disappointing book . I have read all of Ellis' books so far ( apart from the dull and vacuous Glamorama which I had to give up on ) and enjoyed them immensely. Here ,in Lunar Park , the author creates a post-modern mess by writing in a false autobiographical style and using real life characters such as his fellow writer Jay McInerney and members of his own family. He contents himself with a hackneyed old narrative from the horror genre about a character from his previous novel American Psycho , Patrick Bateman , the serial killer ,who has sprung from the pages to haunt his creator. Lots of mumbojumbo about malevolent dolls, spooky e-mails and mutating decor follows until the reader almost expires from tedium. He seems to have bought the material for this novel from Stephen King's reject pile but although Ellis is the darling of trendy literary circles , he does not come anywhere near the more modest skills of King . This book is a sad addition to the canon of a writer who showed such promise in his first collection of stories ,the genuinely spooky The Informers ,written for a creative writing class at university. After about 100 pages of pretentious folly this reader was rooting for the serial killer to come along and put an end to the whole sorry charade.

"Lunar Park" is the sixth novel by American author Bret Easton Ellis. The work of Bret Easton Ellis can be interpreted, and has been, in a variety of ways depending on the amount of depth and complexity the reader is willing to attribute to his novels.

The reason for this is that Ellis is an extremely machiavellian writer who understands that the effective communication of a moral message, will not be achieved unless an author is prepared to bury it within layers of irony, subtlety and various other post-modern tricks in order that it can be unearthed by the reader in his/her own time. I find this reading of Ellis as a writer of the modern American "Parable" to be the most challenging and therefore worthwhile interpretation of his work.

Ellis has been conducting an in-depth exploration, since the early 90s, into the "Parable" literary structure, and how it can be tailored more effective as a means of communication. Ellis has gone about this in a disciplined manner. He has, over the space of four novels (Less Than Zero, The Rules Of Attraction, American Psycho & The Informers) slowly chipped away at literary conventions that, intentionally or not, sermonize by giving indication of an authors given moral stance. Ellis has been relentless in his quest to remove himself from the work and this has led to the inevitable criticism of his novels lacking "literary" qualities. The more problematic inevitability for Ellis, however, followed his fifth novel "Glamorama". After five novels he had unwillingly established his own "literary" style, be it one of detachment or not, which signaled the end of the Bret Easton Ellis project.

However what distinguishes Ellis from other authors is his acute awareness of the perception of his own "celebrity" and how the interpretation of a modern novel cannot be separated from its author. In his sixth novel, "Lunar Park", Ellis tackles this issue head on. Here we have an author who has rediscovered how to "disappear" from his novel. The structure of "Lunar Park" is that of a fantasy/horror novel that is somehow a "metaphor" for life episodes or opinions of the actual author. It is important from the outset to understand that this is entirely not the case and that what Ellis has written is a complete work of fiction where every implication of "metaphor" or direct reference to his own life is not only completely fictional but also dependent on the readers' preconceived ideas of Ellis prior to opening the book.

The triumph of this book is the manner in which Ellis is trying to invent a novel structure that can release the author from the trap of stylistic expectation and still communicate a moral message in a similar vein to his previous works.

By inserting a man called Bret Easton Ellis as the main character in this novel Ellis is not breaking any new literary ground. However Ellis has tried to move beyond this by slowly removing the "narrator" (i.e the writing, descriptive voice of the "real" Bret Easton Ellis as author) from the novel in a new way. Rather than the usual Ellis style of literary indifference here Ellis has "attached" the narrator as a major part of the dramatis personae of the book. Ellis has tried to create a complete work of fiction in every respect, including the narrator (i.e what we imagine is the descriptive voice of the "real" Easton Ellis). We have no problem believing that the man called Bret Easton Ellis in the book is fiction; a trip to his website will illustrate this clearly. However we still remain under the power of the traditional "narrator" of the book. Why wouldn't we? If we can't trust that convention, what can we trust? The narrator at the beginning of "Lunar Park" and also reintroduced in parts at the end is an integral part of the fiction and it is behind the smokescreen of these two distinctly different but fictional "Bret Easton Ellis" characters that he manages to achieve his disappearing act and write his parable.

And a parable it is as there are no biographical facts present, no matter what you feel at the end, you truthfully know nothing more about Bret Easton Ellis than you did when you opened page 1. However if, as you slide Lunar Park back onto your library shelf, you find that you understand a little more about father son relationships and how a person deals with loss then Ellis' project continues to be an insurmountable success.

I felt cheated when I read this load of contractual tripe. Mr Easton Ellis himself declared that he just tried to write a simple horror story. Last resort of a tired mind methinks. Not long after I read "One of Bret's finest works" I discovered a mountain of hard backed Lunar Parks in a Poundshop in Shrewsbury. That says it all.

Having read good reviews of this and seen the author read parts himself, the reality turns out to be awful. There is no narrative tension, is aimed at a very low intelligence and at times is simply pompous. It's cynical criticism of rich suburban life in America is breathtakingly arrogant given the poverty of the world. The story borrows shamelessly from everything from cheap horror films, Spielberg, Ghostbusters and of course Stephen King. The main character staggers through the book not noticing the most basic clues until too late. For anyone who has read any half decent books in their life with real characters, this is just rubbish. My suspicion is in fact that it is written as a film script with dollars attached.